BGuthrie Photos: UT -- Arches Natl Park

UT -- Arches Natl Park:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[4] ARCH_060601_025.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?) $Moab Fault A dramatic break in the earth's surface occurred here about six million years ago. Under intense pressure, unable to stretch, the crust cracked and shifted. Today, the highway parallels this fracture line, called the Moab Fault. After the rock layers shifted, the east wall of the canyon where you are standing ended up more than 2,600 feet lower than the west side (across the highway).$	[5] ARCH_060601_030.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[6] ARCH_060601_044.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. ARCH_060601_007.JPG: That's the new visitors center
2. ARCH_060601_025.JPG: Moab Fault A dramatic break in the earth's surface occurred here about six million years ago. Under intense pressure, unable to stretch, the crust cracked and shifted. Today, the highway parallels this fracture line, called the Moab Fault. After the rock layers shifted, the east wall of the canyon where you are standing ended up more than 2,600 feet lower than the west side (across the highway).
3. ARCH_060601_030.JPG: This is the Moab Fault. Look at the highway and notice how the other side is a totally different height than this side.
4. ARCH_060601_060.JPG: It's Alive! Along the trails, you may notice patches of black crust on the soil (though early stages of development are nearly invisible). Known as "cryptobiotic crust," it is a mixture of cranobacteria, mosses, lichen, fungi, and algae. This remarkable plant community holds the desert sands together, absorbs moisture, produces nutrients, and provides seedbeds for other plants to grow. This crust is so fragile that one footprint can wipe out years of growth. Please don't walk on it. Stay on trails!
5. ARCH_060601_069.JPG: Park Avenue: The sheer walls of this narrow canyon reminded early visitors of buildings lining a big city street. Rising majestically, these geologic "skyscrapers" tell the story of the Entrada Sandstone. Entrada Sandstone began forming more than 150 million years ago as tidal flats, desert, and beach deposits. Over time, layers of rock, perhaps a mile thick, covered these deposits. Tremendous pressure from these rock layers compressed the buried sand into sandstone and cracked it. Erosion then removed the overlying rock layers and the Entrada began to weather. With the past two million years, erosion of the cracks in the Entrada has left vertical slabs like the rock wall to your right. These slabs, called fins, are the first step in arch formation.
6. ARCH_060601_074.JPG: Park Avenue
7. ARCH_060601_088.JPG: The snow in the back is on the La Sal Mountains
8. ARCH_060601_099.JPG: Three formations here. The three spots on the left are called the Three Gossips. The big one on the right is called the Organ. Between them and closer to Three Gossips is Sheeprock.
9. ARCH_060601_143.JPG: Three Gossips
10. ARCH_060601_148.JPG: Sheeprock
11. ARCH_060601_156.JPG: The Rise and Fall of an Arch: Like Living Things, arches have life cycles, too. Starting as small holes in rock faces, they enlarge and eventually collapse from weathering and erosion. Water, whether from rain or snow, dissolves the natural cement (calcium carbonate) in the Entrada Sandstone. Sand grains once "glued" together as rock are separated and washed away, arches form, grow, mature and fall. Although there are no major arches here at Courthouse Towers, the cycle is continuing. Look for Baby Arch in the rock wall to the left of Sheep Rock. Weathering over time will enlarge this growing arch until it finally collapses. [Presumably, there was a solid wall between these three items, arches formed on the left and right, and then they collapsed on themselves.]
12. ARCH_060601_229.JPG: Balanced Rock
13. ARCH_060601_310.JPG: Windows Area
14. ARCH_060601_343.JPG: Delicate Arch
15. ARCH_060601_369.JPG: Arches National Park
16. ARCH_060601_420.JPG: Delicate Arch: Water and time have sculpted Delicate Arch. The span's distinctive shape has inspired such colorful nicknames as "Cowboy Chaps" and "Old Maid's Bloomers." Carved in Entrada Sandstone, this free standing arch is composed mostly of the Slick Rock Member. On top is a five-foot thick layer of the Moab Tongue. A remnant of an ancient fin, the arch today has an opening 45 feet high and 35 feet wide. Erosion continues to wear away the features of this mature span. It is only a matter of time before the geologic and environmental forces that created the arch will destroy it.
17. ARCH_060601_435.JPG: Fiery Furnace
18. ARCH_060601_438.JPG: Skyline Arch Arches usually form slowly, but quick and dramatic changes do occur. In 1940, a large boulder suddenly fell out of Skyline Arch, roughly doubling the size of the opening.
19. ARCH_060601_442.JPG: Skyline Arch
20. ARCH_060601_479.JPG: Landscape Arch
21. ARCH_060601_493.JPG: Landscape Arch: September 1, 1991 -- Hikers thought they heard cracks of thunder from distant clouds. Visitors resting under Landscape Arch noticed loud cracking and popping noises overhead. They fled as small rocks tumbled from the slender 305-foot long span. Moments later, a 60-foot-long rock slab peeled away from the arch's right side. When the dust settled, 180 tons of fresh rock debris lay scattered on the ground. What caused this cataclysmic event? Water had been slowly shaping the arch for countless centuries, dissolving cement between sand grains, seeping into tiny cracks, freezing and expanding. What had finally upset the delicate balance? Unseasonably heavy rains the preceding ten days may have filled pore spaces within the sandstone. The added weight may have finally overwhelmed the rock slab in its timeless struggle with gravity.
22. ARCH_060601_510.JPG: Devil's Garden area (where Landscape Arch and Skyline Arch are located)
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AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Arches National Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arches National Park preserves over 2,000 natural sandstone arches, including the world-famous Delicate Arch, in addition to a variety of unique geological resources and formations.

The park is located near Moab, Utah, and is 119 square miles (309 km�) in size. Its highest elevation is 5,653 feet (1,723 m) at Elephant Butte and its lowest elevation is 4,085 feet (1,245 m) at the visitor center. Since 1970, 42 arches have toppled because of erosion. Arches National Park receives 10 inches (250 mm) of rain a year on average.

The area, administered by the National Park Service, was originally designated as a national monument on April 12, 1929. It was redesignated a national park on November 12, 1971. More than 833,000 people visited it in 2006.

Features:

Among the notable features of the park are:

* Delicate Arch — a lone-standing arch which has become a symbol of Utah
* Balanced Rock — a large balancing rock, the size of three school buses
* Double Arch — two arches, one on top of the other
* Landscape Arch — a very thin, very long arch over 300 feet (100 m); the largest in the park
* Fiery Furnace — an area of maze-like narrow passages and tall rock columns (see biblical reference Fiery Furnace)
* Devil's Garden — with many arches and columns scattered along a ridge
* Dark Angel — a free-standing column of dark stone at the end of the Devil's Garden trail.
* Courthouse Towers — a collection of tall stone columns
* Petrified dunes — petrified remnants of sand dunes blown from the ancient lakes that covered the area.

Geology:

The national park lies atop an underground salt bed, which is the main cause of the formation of the arches and spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths in the area. Thousands of feet thick in places, this salt bed was deposited over the Colorado Plateau some 300 million years ago when a sea flowed in ...More...
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (UT -- Arches Natl Park) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2016_UT_Arches: UT -- Arches Natl Park (143 photos from 2016)
- 2006_UT_Arches_Petro: UT -- Arches Natl Park -- Petroglyph trail (32 photos from 2006)
- 2003_UT_Arches: UT -- Arches Natl Park (30 photos from 2003)
- 2002_UT_Arches: UT -- Arches Natl Park (41 photos from 2002)
Sort of Related Pages: Still more pages here that have content somewhat related to this one :
- 2006_UT_ArchesVC: UT -- Arches Natl Park -- Visitor Center (11 photos from 2006)
- 2016_UT_ArchesVC: UT -- Arches Natl Park -- Visitor Center (87 photos from 2016)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Natural Beauty] [Park (National Park Service)]
2006 photos: Equipment this year: I was using all six Fuji cameras at various times -- an S602Zoom, two S7000s,a S5200, an S9000, and an S9100. The majority of pictures this year were taken with the S9000. I have to say, the S7000s was the best camera I've used up to this point.. Trips this year: Florida (two separate trips including Lotusphere and taking care of mom), three weeks out west (including Yellowstone), Williamsburg, San Diego (comic book convention), and Georgia. Number of photos taken this year: 183,000.
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